Mordendrauen
im
34. Spiel #
box 6/1
ir.
of
Ml-
er,
he
3is
Nr.
for
73;
bir
the
vall
the
rue
the
S
zed
out
hat
reat
has
hong
ligh¬
yden
nt of
fthe
ation
etual
th M.
#elich,
18011.
ghton
Adam
Which
·The
ht of
rship,
tary
and
the
theu,?
* The
nself
spels,?
Testa¬
ollege,
on, a
ie Rev.
d next
Lord
eligions
indsay,
15.
1-917
cha¬
1
ents
Ho11
ing
t 18
Frul.
the
SOr
een
appeat lo her. Her manner is hand and busi¬
nesslike.
Still. she accepts a desperntel
proffered invitation to dinner and lenves on
the table, as“ paginent for the entertain¬
mnent.a stimn just enongh to save the other
ollicer. The woung lientenant shoots himself
lud is soune dend by bis unele, whio had
Droughit tie necessarge stun from mis wise. Tle
storg is inclodrama, inferior in depth and in¬
telligenee to both the stories alrendy men¬
tioned, but planned and built up with achmir¬
able skill.
Heinrich Mann’s novel is also melodramatie.
not only in matter but in stvle; it is far from
giving the illusion of complete reality. Felicie
is the“ Mutter Marie'' ofthe title. As a poor
servant-girl she has an illegitimate Giid,
whiomt she tnkes to tlie river-bank hut has not
che heart to drewn. Thie baby is taken into
the honse of the childless General von Lambart
and his wife, and brought up as their own. The
mother. in thie meantume, marries a rich old
man, inherits his wealth, and then feels a
longing for her child. At length she t#ace¬
Run and finds him abont to marry a poverty¬
stricken princess, it a shameless old profiteer,
in whose clutches the General has come can be
forred to keep his hands öff Her. THO TeS 01
chie storg is concerned with how Felicie con¬
quers her love for her son and her jealousy of
che princess, and cooperates in deceiving the
villamous profiteer, and in saving from finan¬
cial mmin the General who had stolen her child.
Tlis is a frank piece of melodrama, even down
to the long but, we fear, incredible scene in the
confessional, ihere Felicie makes the great
rennneiation. The novel is saved from com¬
plete banalitz be thie pieture it gives of the
General’s household and the charming young
princess, aristocracy reduced to beggary after
the war.
The chief value of Gabriele Reuter’s novel,
too, lies in the picture it gives of a certain
phase of German society during and after the
war. In 1895 this popular woman writer made
a“hit' with her novel, Aus guter Familie,“
a story of a woman’s emancipation, a kind of
German equivalent to" The Woman Wihro
Did.“ The heroine, Dorothee, of this new book
is of that generation. Slie goes away to Athens
with her lover, an archologist, has, unknown
to angone, a cluild before she marries, and
then returns to lead a respectable and more or
less happy married life. The central problem
is her attitude to the licence of the succeeding
generation, represented by her daughter Petra,
whlo, after a trial ef conventional marriage,
abandons herself to tme ieverish gaiety, con¬
scienceless pursuit of luxurg and unhesitating
surrender to the primitive instinets which, if
weare to believe the German fietion-writers—
and this particular novelist appears to write
froin genuine observation—accompanied and
followed the German collapse to a degree mm¬
knowen in other countries. Dorothee’s hands
are tied, not oulg by her ##n carly adventure,
but by a complete moral agnosticism. As
ethe woman who did,“ after all, she had seif¬
consciously defied a conventional standard and
set up one of her own. But the succeeding
generation has no standards. So, letting Petra
go lier osen wav, Dorothee devotes herself to
her seconddaughter, thie beautiful and innocent
Helge. Her ingennous girlish love is nearly
wrecked by the decadent dancer, Leczinska,
whio had conccived the ambition of training the
child for her particularly passionate and
sensnous form of art. The reader finds him¬
self working up some interest in the develop¬
ment of this secondary plot when the novelist
lets the miserable Petra, abandened by her
millionaire lover, enter into a respectable
second marriage, and causes Helge to meet
her death in a motor-car accident with the
dancer-the fourth time in thie story that the
Angel of Death has been produced as the dens
###hm. It would obviously be easy to
dismiss this novel as cheap popular fietion,
but forthe fact that it does form, in sorne sort,
a mirror beid up 1o Nature and a record of a
practised novelist’s progress in disillusion¬
ment.
Mr. Beverley Nichols’s new book, Are
they ihe Same at Home?“ a collection of
essays containing the author’s impressions of
his contemporaries, will be published by
Messrs. Jonathan Cape towards the end of the
#month.
im
34. Spiel #
box 6/1
ir.
of
Ml-
er,
he
3is
Nr.
for
73;
bir
the
vall
the
rue
the
S
zed
out
hat
reat
has
hong
ligh¬
yden
nt of
fthe
ation
etual
th M.
#elich,
18011.
ghton
Adam
Which
·The
ht of
rship,
tary
and
the
theu,?
* The
nself
spels,?
Testa¬
ollege,
on, a
ie Rev.
d next
Lord
eligions
indsay,
15.
1-917
cha¬
1
ents
Ho11
ing
t 18
Frul.
the
SOr
een
appeat lo her. Her manner is hand and busi¬
nesslike.
Still. she accepts a desperntel
proffered invitation to dinner and lenves on
the table, as“ paginent for the entertain¬
mnent.a stimn just enongh to save the other
ollicer. The woung lientenant shoots himself
lud is soune dend by bis unele, whio had
Droughit tie necessarge stun from mis wise. Tle
storg is inclodrama, inferior in depth and in¬
telligenee to both the stories alrendy men¬
tioned, but planned and built up with achmir¬
able skill.
Heinrich Mann’s novel is also melodramatie.
not only in matter but in stvle; it is far from
giving the illusion of complete reality. Felicie
is the“ Mutter Marie'' ofthe title. As a poor
servant-girl she has an illegitimate Giid,
whiomt she tnkes to tlie river-bank hut has not
che heart to drewn. Thie baby is taken into
the honse of the childless General von Lambart
and his wife, and brought up as their own. The
mother. in thie meantume, marries a rich old
man, inherits his wealth, and then feels a
longing for her child. At length she t#ace¬
Run and finds him abont to marry a poverty¬
stricken princess, it a shameless old profiteer,
in whose clutches the General has come can be
forred to keep his hands öff Her. THO TeS 01
chie storg is concerned with how Felicie con¬
quers her love for her son and her jealousy of
che princess, and cooperates in deceiving the
villamous profiteer, and in saving from finan¬
cial mmin the General who had stolen her child.
Tlis is a frank piece of melodrama, even down
to the long but, we fear, incredible scene in the
confessional, ihere Felicie makes the great
rennneiation. The novel is saved from com¬
plete banalitz be thie pieture it gives of the
General’s household and the charming young
princess, aristocracy reduced to beggary after
the war.
The chief value of Gabriele Reuter’s novel,
too, lies in the picture it gives of a certain
phase of German society during and after the
war. In 1895 this popular woman writer made
a“hit' with her novel, Aus guter Familie,“
a story of a woman’s emancipation, a kind of
German equivalent to" The Woman Wihro
Did.“ The heroine, Dorothee, of this new book
is of that generation. Slie goes away to Athens
with her lover, an archologist, has, unknown
to angone, a cluild before she marries, and
then returns to lead a respectable and more or
less happy married life. The central problem
is her attitude to the licence of the succeeding
generation, represented by her daughter Petra,
whlo, after a trial ef conventional marriage,
abandons herself to tme ieverish gaiety, con¬
scienceless pursuit of luxurg and unhesitating
surrender to the primitive instinets which, if
weare to believe the German fietion-writers—
and this particular novelist appears to write
froin genuine observation—accompanied and
followed the German collapse to a degree mm¬
knowen in other countries. Dorothee’s hands
are tied, not oulg by her ##n carly adventure,
but by a complete moral agnosticism. As
ethe woman who did,“ after all, she had seif¬
consciously defied a conventional standard and
set up one of her own. But the succeeding
generation has no standards. So, letting Petra
go lier osen wav, Dorothee devotes herself to
her seconddaughter, thie beautiful and innocent
Helge. Her ingennous girlish love is nearly
wrecked by the decadent dancer, Leczinska,
whio had conccived the ambition of training the
child for her particularly passionate and
sensnous form of art. The reader finds him¬
self working up some interest in the develop¬
ment of this secondary plot when the novelist
lets the miserable Petra, abandened by her
millionaire lover, enter into a respectable
second marriage, and causes Helge to meet
her death in a motor-car accident with the
dancer-the fourth time in thie story that the
Angel of Death has been produced as the dens
###hm. It would obviously be easy to
dismiss this novel as cheap popular fietion,
but forthe fact that it does form, in sorne sort,
a mirror beid up 1o Nature and a record of a
practised novelist’s progress in disillusion¬
ment.
Mr. Beverley Nichols’s new book, Are
they ihe Same at Home?“ a collection of
essays containing the author’s impressions of
his contemporaries, will be published by
Messrs. Jonathan Cape towards the end of the
#month.